Two boys gone: Mona Shores Middle School rocked by two suicides in two years

NORTON SHORES, MI -- In the eight months since her 13-year-old son took his life and departed this world, Gretchen Olson has come up with “a hundred different reasons” why he chose to leave.

“For every reason, I think of reasons it wasn’t that,” she said. “Then I come up with a hundred other reasons.”

But try as she might, there is simply no logical explanation why Greg Olson, a smart, witty eighth-grader at Mona Shores Middle School, would take a shotgun on an otherwise routine Sunday afternoon and shoot himself in his basement bedroom.

There’s no way to explain the unexplainable – including why another Mona Shores eighth-grade boy, by all accounts happy and well-liked, had used a handgun to take his own life inside his bedroom just over a year before Greg did.

Two boys -- two great kids full of promise -- gone, taking with them whatever drove them to do the unthinkable and leaving behind tortured families and a school rocked by two suicides in two years.

Nevertheless, Helmer’s staff put into effect the “watch list” they had been contemplating since Kaaine died. On it go the names of students who are struggling – whether academically, behaviorally or emotionally. Staff are extra sensitive now, Helmer said. They carefully monitor students for those who may need extra support.

But would Kaaine’s and Greg’s names have been put on such a list? Helmer said probably not.

They were two boys who never raised red flags – who at least outwardly appeared happy. But then again, who knows what goes on in the minds of adolescents?

In 2012, the year Greg died, 19 percent of Muskegon County seventh-graders said they had considered suicide and 12 percent had planned suicide in the previous 12 months, according to a Youth Risk Behavior Survey administered to students in all of the county’s public middle and high schools.

Among Muskegon County ninth-graders, nearly one in 10 – 9.1 percent – reported having attempted suicide.

“Middle school kids are going through some of the most difficult times in their lives because of all the things happening to them physically -- hormonally with puberty -- and also with the whole question of who do I belong with? What group of kids do I connect with?” Helmer said.

'A good kid'

Ever since he was an infant, Greg Olson adored his sister Sarah, who is 2 ½ years older, and emulated everything she did when he was little. They were a tight-knit family and as Greg grew up he began to share a love of heavy metal rock music with his dad and the two would attend concerts together.

WARNING SIGNS

Things that indicate a person is in crisis and suicide is a likely outcome without intervention:

• Threatening self harm

• Expression of hopelessness

• Talking or writing about death

• Expressing rage or seeking revenge

• Increased alcohol/substance use

• Withdrawal from family and friends.

• Giving away prized possessions

• Lack of interest in the future

• Tying up "loose ends"

• Sleeping disorders (too much/too little)

Source: Muskegon Suicide Prevention Coalition

Greg was goofy – “random,” his sister said.

“It was hard to stay mad at him,” she said as she sat at the family kitchen table with her parents during an hours-long interview that was punctuated with laughter and tears.

Greg played baseball, loved animals and, as he grew older, “marched to the beat of a different drummer,” Gretchen said. Strikingly good-looking, he grew his hair long for a time and wore black T-shirts, which Gretchen said she and her husband allowed as long as Greg got good grades.

“He was smart, he was personable,” Helmer said. “He was just a well-behaved student.”

Then, after thinking a few moments, Helmer added “very kind – very kind-hearted.”

Though the two remained close as they grew up, Sarah, a junior at Mona Shores High School, said she and Greg never really shared their feelings.

His mother said Greg was self conscious, like many other kids his age. He was thin, slow to physically mature and was lifting weights “all the time,” she said.

“He was very sentimental, very sensitive,” Gretchen said.

She thinks that’s why he took to wearing black T-shirts and long hair.

“I don’t think he wanted people to know how sweet and sentimental he was,” she said. “To the world, he probably wanted them to think he was this tough kid.”

Rather than the Mustang his grandparents had offered to buy him when he turned 16, Greg had his heart set on a big old white truck in the driveway that was his dad’s.

His father, who asked to not be identified, remembered visiting his son in his bedroom on the night before he died and asking what he wanted for his birthday, which was just 10 days away.

Greg told him he wanted new tires for that old white truck.

“I think he knew I thought he was a good kid,” his father said.

'Spend more time'

Greg’s friends, some of whom the Olsons didn’t meet while Greg was alive, still come over to visit. They like to hang out in Greg’s bedroom, which is kept as meticulous as when he left it.

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The boys invite the Olsons to their football games and family parties. They call Gretchen Olson “Mom.”

“We told them the door is always open to them,” she said. “When they do come over, they tell me stories about Greg I didn’t know.”

They are, she said, deeply hurt by Greg’s absence. She knows how important it is for them to have an outlet for their feelings.

“I think we almost expect it with girls,” she said. “Boys, I think they’re almost expected to keep it inside … I think with boys, they want so much to be a man, but they still feel like a boy.”

Just eight months since their boy left them, Greg’s parents continue to search for reasons why.

“You question every decision you make as a parent,” his father said. “Maybe this was wrong, maybe that was wrong.”

Greg left no note – not that one would tell the whole story, Gretchen said. She doesn’t think her son was bullied. She doesn’t think he was depressed.

“If he was, he masked it incredibly well,” she said.

Just days before he died, Greg had been “on top of the world,” Gretchen said. A history buff, he had given a really good speech about World War II in his English class -- a class he had struggled with, she said.

“It seemed like he was breaking out of his shell a little more,” she said. “He was doing really, really well.”

Greg’s death has changed his family forever. There are times they can’t bear to be apart, they said. Sarah often prefers to stay at home than go out with friends.

“It changes the way you look at people,” Sarah said.

“It does,” her mother responded. “You look at people with your heart. You don’t look at them with your eyes.”

And it has changed how Gretchen lives her life. She said she no longer worries if there’s laundry waiting to be washed or whether dinner is going to be late.

Family, she said, is more important than any of that.

“I wish I had just dropped everything more often,” she said. “I wish I had just spent more time.”